Take a gander at this report from the U.S. Dept. of Energy.
What? You don’t look at links like that? You’re busy. You need to check your Hotmail account to see if that guy/girl who likes you as a friend left any subtle clues that he/she is in love with you? Damn you people.
Your power bill is going to go up. It doesn’t matter where you live or what kind of fuel turns the turbines that makes your electricity. The alarming data in this report is that coal fired power plants, whether “traditional” or, especially, “clean” (a’ la a certain proposed power plant in Itasca County), are almost as expensive to start as NUCLEAR, which is very, very expensive to build. Natural gas plants are cheaper, but natural gas itself is rising in cost faster. Brother, there just ain’t no break for people with outlets.
The point is, if things are getting so expensive, why don’t we just invest in the expensive renewables that keep the North Pole from melting and us out of protracted occupations in the Middle East? Just a question. Do with it what you will.
UPDATE: An early morning conversation with a nuclear pal leads me to this clarification: I’m not speaking against nuclear power, just saying that it’s the quintessential example of expensive technology.
Aaron thanks for bringing this up.
That is the question isn’t it? With coal prices up by 75% from four years ago and rising, where do we want to sink our dollars, in polluting coal or renewables. No brainer if you think about it. Everyone should be thinking about what they can do to eliminate coal. Not only from the global warming aspect, but for our individual health in general. Coal companies don’t want you to know what the health care costs are, indirectly or directly, from the coal industry. And the costs are enormous and long term.
Coal is not clean or cheap as a certain enterprising start up company would like us to believe.
The place to start folks is energy efficiency. Conservation doesn’t mean going without, just utilizing our energy needs wisely. And we can all benefit from it NOW, not have to wait 20 years for technological hopefuls to tell us that carbon capture and sequestration isn’t going to work.
Best wishes Aaron!